The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in the present disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Wireless local area network (WLAN) public land mobile network (PLMN) selection was introduced in Release 6 of 3GPP specifications for interworking between third generation partnership project (3GPP) and WLAN systems as part of the interworking-WLAN (i-WLAN) architecture specified in 3GPP technical specifications (TSs) such as TS 22.234, TS 23.234, TS 24.234. In those technical specifications, a user equipment (UE) may be directed to select a service provider or PLMN which may provide services to a WLAN. These services may include services such as basic connectivity to the internet, or other services such as Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia System services (IMS), Voice over IP (VoIP), video on demand (VOD), media/content streaming, etc. In Release 8 of the 3GPP specifications, access network discovery and selection function (ANDSF) policies were introduced that could be used to modify PLMN selection for a WLAN as specified in the i-WLAN architecture.
Currently, to allow the concepts introduced by Release 6 and Release 8 to coexist, PLMN selection may occur first, and then application of the ANDSF policies may occur to select the WLAN or WLAN AP in the i-WLAN architecture. However, a Service Provider/PLMN may only be connected to a single WLAN network. Therefore, by selecting the Service Provider/PLMN, the WLAN network, which may for example be identified by one or more service set identifiers (SSIDs) and/or WLAN APs, may be selected by default.